Hospital business leaders are open, and even optimistic, about the benefits of innovation from non-traditional healthcare players, such as Amazon and Apple, according to a new report from Captains of Industry, a marketing consultancy.
The research, which included interviews with hospital leaders across 11 hospitals in the Boston area, identified a gap between where hospital executives expect Amazon to debut in the marketplace and the areas where the market truly desires innovation. Principally, while hospital executives anticipate Amazon entering healthcare through supply chain and retail initiatives, the majority of respondents pointed to consumer-facing healthcare IT as the area most in need of transformation.
Indeed, hospital executives are keenly watching Amazon given its strategic edge. While Apple and Microsoft have the most traceable digital footprint inside hospitals today, healthcare leaders ranked Amazon as the #1 company most capable of bringing transformative change to healthcare in the next three years, the study found
As Healthcare Informatics reported in January, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase & Co announced they were teaming up on an initiative to improve satisfaction and reduce costs for their companies’ employees. Although not many details are known about this collaboration, the organizations named Atul Gawande, M.D., as CEO of the initiative, back in June.
Meanwhile, in August, Amazon said it would be part of another endeavor related to healthcare—to remove interoperability barriers and to make progress on adoption of health data standards. For this, Amazon will be teaming up with Microsoft, Google, IBM, and others to jointly commit to support healthcare interoperability by advancing healthcare standards such as HL7 (Health Level Seven International), FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), and the Argonaut Project.
Indeed, over the past year, industry observers have had their eye on non-traditional healthcare players such as Amazon and what they can bring to the table from an innovation and cost-cutting perspective. One recent survey of 100 healthcare organization leaders found that most C-suite executives do have their eyes on Amazon to shake up healthcare.
This latest report, “Healthcare in the Amazon Era,” researchers explore the transition to Amazon era healthcare. It seeks to define the strategic questions that organizations, hospitals and leaders on the edge of medicine and technology must address to deliver care and conduct business in the Amazon era of healthcare.
“The ability to distribute healthcare broadly, reliably and timely—when the patient wants it—is exciting, but business leaders and clinicians who participated in this study call for a future where healthcare in the Amazon era is also safe, equitable and sustainable for all involved,” Lauren Prentiss, strategy director for Captains of Industry and head of Captains Research, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Delivering against those parameters is incredibly difficult. But the more we do it, the more rewarding it will be. Not only for those shaping the Amazon era of healthcare, but for our society as a whole.”
